Nehemiah: God is Faithful Despite Our Failures
Pastor Fletcher preaches about spiritual renewal from Nehemiah 9. Discussion points: Spiritual renewal starts with confession and remembering who God is, the Bible is full of examples of the “sin sandwich”, Jesus is magnified even more in our confession and repentance of sin.
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Scripture reader: [Nehemiah 9:1-15, 32-37] Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.
On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani; and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.
“You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you. You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous.
“And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea, and performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day.
And you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters. By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them.
“Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress."
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: All right, good morning, church. How's everybody doing today? Yeah, it's been a couple of weeks. I was on vacation with my family last week or two weeks ago, and then last week I was at the retreat. Anybody else at the retreat? All right, did, who stayed around for the last day, for Sunday morning? Let me see a real raise of hands. Sorry. You already heard this passage. We're doing the same passage that they did last week at the retreat, but last week here Calvin preached faithfully from the New Testament, and the rest of us haven't heard Nehemiah 9.
And so it's actually one of the best chapters in the entire book. I was like, oh my gosh, we cannot skip Nehemiah 9, especially when Nehemiah 11 is super boring, so. We're going to go through Nehemiah this week and we'll catch up with everybody else by mostly skipping Nehemiah 11 in a couple of weeks.
I want you to take just a moment, to imagine that you are at a job interview. I know, I know you don't wanna imagine that it's a real interview. I promise it's not one of those AI videos that you have to talk to, and you were asked at that interview, what is your greatest weakness? That's a pretty normal interview question, I suppose, and everyone knows how you're supposed to answer that. You're supposed to find your greatest strength and somehow spin it to become your greatest weakness. Like my greatest weakness is that I don't have any boundaries. I just, I just live to please my boss day in and day out. That's my greatest weakness. I hope it's OK with you. And the boss meanwhile, yep, sounds good. You got another one here.
I don't think that there's very many places where we are really invited to have true weaknesses. If you think through your life, there's not very many places for you to actually be weak. In, in the office, weakness is not something that you really wanna emphasize. If you're in a school place, you really don't wanna emphasize weakness. You don't really wanna show your faults. But friends, one of the most powerful spiritual practices that there is. Is confession of your shortcomings. Confession of where you went wrong, confession of your sin. It is truly 100% powerful to see your faults and to be able to lay those before the Lord. To confess your sins is to look to God and to say, You are the potter, I am the clay. Shape me, use me. My life is not perfect. I need you, God. And without that, there is no spiritual vitality. Without the sense of I have done wrong, and I need God, there's no way for you to actually experience all that he has for you.
This is at the heart of Christianity. No one, no one here, no one in the history of the world has ever become a Christian, because they just got life figured out. Because they were just smarter than everyone. There's a reason why there isn't an altar call at the end of debates. You can have a debate, you can prove that you're smarter than someone else, but it doesn't mean that you have spiritual life with God. No one has ever disproved Christianity by saying Christians are terrible people. The reality is we know we're terrible people. That's why we're Christians. We need what Christ offers us. And it has to come with some sort of confession. Isn't that a refreshing reality that There is a place where you can come and, and really be honest with who you are. And really be honest with your shortcomings and your failures that you don't have to fake in all of life. And that really should be the church.
Although I do know that many of us, we have not experienced the church like that. That our experience of the church has been anything but a place where you can be real. In fact, the church can be so much worse than even the office. The church can become this place where you have to put on the church face, the church clothes, where you have to act like you have it all together. Friends, this is not a museum for saints. This has been said so many times by different pastors. Not a museum for saints where we all come and we get to look at how righteous each other are. It is a hospital for sinners. A place where we can come and bow before the Lord, because he is righteous, and we are not. Friends, what if our church community was a place where we don't have to pretend. What if we could let our guard down and feel safe and be honest? Because, not because there's nothing to hide, but because God is our righteousness. That it doesn't depend upon what we achieve.
This is the main point of this passage, that God, listen, main point, God is faithful despite our failures. God is faithful despite our failures. And in fact, I'm willing to take it one step further and say true spiritual renewal begins when we stop hiding our sin and remember who God is. we're, we're back in Nehemiah this week. I know we, we get up here and we, and we cold read Nehemiah, and it's not an easy book to cold read. It's not an easy book to remember what's going on. So why don't I catch us up just briefly with what, what, what's going on in Nehemiah so that we can know what's happening in Nehemiah chapter 9 as we walk through this passage.
Last week or two weeks ago we did Nehemiah chapter 8. And in Nehemiah chapter 8, we are in the very middle of the narrative, and maybe a little bit past halfway. And actually the wall has been completed. The walls are finished. That's what Nehemiah set out to do, to lead the people back into Jerusalem, rebuild the walls so they can be safe. So the first time in generations, we see the people of Israel in the city of God and in a place where they can be safe. And this all occurred around the end of September. And that coincided with a feast. The feast, the festival of booths. Now, if you're not familiar with the festival of booths, it's a common practice of Jewish people, even to this day, to practice the festival of booths, and even our, our brother and sisters, our friends across the street, the, the Jewish temple right here, you'll see them set up a large kind of boxy looking tent. It all, it's, it's meant to represent kind of the tabernacle, and so it's all, it's never like a, it's not like a, a, a, a North Face tent that you might set up out in the wilderness, OK, when you say a tent, it's like a booth. It's like a, a box, and it has like curtains on each side.
And if you go through some areas, I remember I lived in Brookline for 3 years, and in Brookline, there's a lot of Jewish people, and if you drive through Brookline, you'll see that people just have their booths set up in their front yards, because it's an urban area and they don't have backyards to set them up in. And what the festival was meant to represent was God delivering his people out of Egypt and remembering how they lived in booths during the time where they were wandering in the wilderness. And so each year they would come and they would celebrate what God had done to lead them out of slavery.
And so we get to the walls being built. And right after the walls are built, it comes on this festival. Now it's probably been many, many years since the people of God have been able to celebrate the festival of the booths. And so they come together and they have a huge festival, a huge party, and actually what happens is one of my favorite passages in all the scripture. They go and they get the scribe Ezra. I love it when a scribe has a prominent position because it's just one of those behind the scenes people. They finally get to come out and they go, they say, it's almost like the people are chanting. They're like, you tell Ezra to go get that book. We are ready to hear it. They're hungry for the word of God, and they're saying, bring out the book.
And Ezra gets up and he reads the scripture for like 8 hours. And as he's reading the scripture, the people of God are convicted of their sin. And they start to cry, or they got really bored and they wanted them to stop and they started to cry. But I think that it's that they were convicted. They heard the word of God preached, the word of God spoken, and for the first time in generations, they've heard it in a place of safety, and they are overcome with the fact that they have rebelled against God. And they begin to mourn and weep. But what Nehemiah actually does is, is great because he steps in as the people are weeping, and they, and he says, hey, that's an appropriate response. That is the way that you should respond. But not right now. Because right now, we're having a feast. And so right now, before you mourn over your sin, we're gonna remember what God has done.
And so for the next 7 days, they feasted, and they celebrated what God had done to bring them, like the people of Israel, coming out of Egypt. They have come out of Babylon, they've returned from exile, and they're repentant of their sin, and they're praising what God. It's done.
But then we get to chapter 9. And in chapter 9, what it says that it is the 24th day of the month, that very first verse. It says Nehemiah chapter 9, verse 1. Now on the 24th day of this month, the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth. And with earth on their heads. Now the 24th day is two days after the last day of the festival of the booths. So they, they ended the day with, they ended the festival with another feast. They had a day to like clean up, tear down their booths and everything. And now they're coming together again, and they're like, we're ready now. Because we have to mourn what we have lost. And they're wearing sackcloth. If you don't know what sackcloth is, just think like burlap, think like a potato sack. It's itchy, it's uncomfortable. They've got earth on their heads. This is an ancient equivalent of wearing all black, of being in mourning, of, of someone near to you has passed, or anytime that you might feel like the inside of you is in mourning, and it's a, it's an amazing thing how ancient people would often dress to reflect how their insides felt. And so they would dress wearing this burlap, wearing the sackcloth, wearing earth on their heads. They were in a state of mourning.
And they start confessing their sins and the sins of the previous generations. They can't, because here's the reality. They've been out of the land of Israel for like 70+ years. They've now returned back to the promised city of God. And, and they can't just act like nothing happened. There was a reason why they got sent out of the, of Israel. There's a reason why they went into exile. This would be the equivalent of a married couple having a huge dispute, ongoing issues that continue on for years and years. So they finally separate. Years go by, they finally decide to make up. They move back in together and they never talk about it. You can't do that, OK? Free marital advice. You have to like talk it out.
Here, the people recognize like, hey, we can't just ignore what sent us into exile, because if we ignore it, it's just gonna happen again. And so we need to come, and we need to own our faults and our sins, and confess them to God.
Verse 2, the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord for their God for a quarter of the day. For another quarter of it, they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. Now the people were truly allowed to weep, to bring their mourning. And after this, Nehemiah records what is a bit of a sermon. And I, I don't, it doesn't say exactly who gave this sermon. It may have been one of the Levites. Many times when Nehemiah just starts prose like this, it's Nehemiah himself speaking. And so maybe this is Nehemiah himself giving a sermon based upon what they've read in the word.
And if you look at verse 6. This is where it starts. It starts with, you are the Lord, you are Yahweh. You alone. You have made heaven and the, and the heaven of the heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is in it. And so what Nehemiah does to the rest of Nehemiah chapter 9, is he goes through a detailed history of the people of God. He goes through the history of basically all of the, the, chapters, all the books of the Bible before you get to Nehemiah. And he starts with creation, and he goes through Abraham, and he goes into Egypt. He goes into the people being in Exodus and coming out of Egypt. He talks about Moses, he talks about Abraham. Before that, he talks about leading the people through the wilderness by a column of fire at night, and a column of smoke and day. And then he goes into the people of Joshua's time, taking over the land of the, of promise, and then he talks about the judges, and he talks about the kings, and he hits the. Familiar pattern over and over again as he goes through the history of Egypt of Israel.
And if you wanna understand the Old Testament, this is the Old Testament in a nutshell. He does it very well. And it's what we call the cycle of sin, or what I like to call, and I do this all the time, is the sin sandwich. OK? What you see as you read the Old Testament, and this is what you should see every time, you can kind of pick it up, and no matter what passage you're reading, you can say, what part am I in right now? And what part of the sin sandwich am I on right now? Because what he records is first, God's grace, what God has done. Two, how people messed it up. How they rebelled against God. And three, how God responded to them. Usually by they have to bear consequence to their sin, but that God is gives grace again. That he gives unmerited favor, that he gives blessing and not curse, that he's compassionate and kind to the people, and then the cycle just repeats. God's good. We've messed up, sin sandwich, God's good. That's that over and over again you see that happening.
Let me give you two examples, OK? Hang in there with me. Verse 15, you gave them bread from heaven for their hunger. Anybody remember this story? Manna. Manna means, what is it? It means what is it? the, the bread fell from heaven. They saw these little wafers coming down and they looked at the ground, they said, what is it? And they just decided to call it, what is it? It's like naming a dog "dog". And so the bread came from heaven for their hunger, and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst. And you told them to go into the, go in to possess the land that you have sworn to give them. Verse 16, but, but they and our fathers acted presumptuously, and stiffened their neck. Now this is a, like an agrarian term for like an animal that refuses to follow. They stiffen their neck, they refuse to follow where you have them go, and. And the people, they did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey, and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. They're crazy. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
Do you see it? Do you see the sin sandwich? God's grace, he led them out of the, of, of Egypt. Their rebellion, they stiffen their neck. They wanted to go back into slavery, but yet God abounding in goodness, loving and kindness, he was good to them. There's your pattern throughout all scripture, and it basically just says our main point for today that God is faithful despite our failures.
Another example before we move on, verse 23. He does this several times as he goes through kind of the history of Israel. Verse 23, you multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and you brought them into the land that they had told their fathers to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into your hand with their king. And the people of the land, and that they might do with them as they would, and they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns, already hewn vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled, and became fat, and delighted themselves in your great goodness. There's nothing better. Just eating, getting fat, delighting yourself in God. Like this is just like a description of what life is meant to be. They, they're living their lives here. I don't actually want to be fat, but sometimes it sounds nice.
Verse 26, Nevertheless, they were disobedient. And rebelled against you, and cast your law behind their back, and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore, OK, so that's, we've got God's goodness. We just saw our sinfulness. Now we're gonna see some consequences of sin. Therefore, you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering, they cried out to you, and you heard them from heaven. Again, God's goodness, and according to your great mercies, you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies. This is the cycle that we repeat over and over throughout the scriptures. And when you're reading the Old Testament, just look for where you are in this cycle. It's almost always, you're gonna be at one part here of what's happening. This is the pattern that God delivers his people, he gives them good things, the people rebel, they're given over to their sin, and then they cry out again, and God saves them again.
And unfortunately, the pattern of the Old Testament is the pattern that you and I live as well. Where we are delivered by God. We taste of his goodness and his sweetness and his kindness. And then eventually we forget it, and we run back into rebellion. But yet God never gives up, and he's always willing to forgive. And though we might bear some consequences of our sin. He's willing to welcome us back as we confess and live for him. That their story is our story. Here's something we need to see in this passage. Conviction and confession are essential for spiritual renewal. Conviction and con and confession are essential for spiritual renewal. If you want to be renewed spiritually, you have to confess. You have to acknowledge where you are.
Acts chapter 3 says this so wonderfully. In Acts 3 verses 19 and 20, Peter is preaching, and he's going around sharing the gospel, and he's, he tells the people, repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins might be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. We all want those times of refreshing, do we not? Do you want that time of refreshing where you feel like your spiritual life is really full of life, where you are vibrant with love for who God is? It requires for you to repent. Now everybody wants a spiritual life, but no one really wants to repent. Because it's uncomfortable. Not only is it uncomfortable, but here's the difficult part that I have.
Even as I was getting ready to preach the sermon, I'm looking at my life and I have repentance in my mind as just what I, what I do when I've obviously broken the rules. And so I'm even saying, OK, I want spiritual life, I need to repent, I need to confess. What do I confess? And it's hard to even come up with anything in that moment, because I'm not aware of the way that I've lived for myself instead of for God. You see, our ideas of sin become very Shallow. Our ideas of sin just become, did I break one of the 10 commandments today? And you kind of go through them and it's like, well, I didn't kill anybody, so I guess I'm OK. but sin is so much deeper than that. And it's so much more nuanced. And I think there's even more to it.
I think, one of my heroes, Welsh pastor who pastored in England in, in the mid-twentieth century, Martin Lloyd Jones, and he says it like this. When it comes to understanding sin. He says you'll never make yourself feel that you are a sinner. Because there's a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. Don't you feel that? Don't you feel your inner lawyer popping up anytime you feel like you may have done something wrong. Ah, it was really something else, someone else's fault. We're all on very good terms with ourselves. And we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God. I love this quote because it fits so perfectly with Nehemiah 9, where basically they're saying God is good all the time, God is good. And all the time God is good all the time.
And yet, when we see that, we finally recognize our sin. And then we confess, and we see that he's good again. And it's, you want to live on the spiral of life, where your sin pushes you towards Christ, instead of the spiral of death. Where you ignore your sin, you minimize your sin, and you are led away from God. You see, little sin requires a little savior. And if you have a great savior here today, you must also have great sin. We glory That Christ may be magnified. When you minimize your sin, you minimize your savior. But when you see your sin, and you give it to God, Christ is magnified. He's made much of. And as a result of that, he's glorified when we come to him. Mm.
Let me just take a moment to try to show you God in this passage. Did you know that Jesus also preached during the festival of booths. That one of his longest recording sermons, recorded sermons, is given during the festival. John chapter 7 and chapter 8. He gets up, John chapter 7 verse 2, now the now the Jews' feast of booths was at hand. And I think that actually, as Jesus is preaching here, there's no reason to necessarily know that this is true. There's no way to prove this, but I have a theory that I think that Jesus is riffing off of Nehemiah 9 a little bit. Because many of the themes that come up in Nehemiah 9, they come up again in John 7 and 8.
Let me give you just 3 parallels between Nehemiah 9 and what Jesus had to say. First, Nehemiah 9:20, it says you gave your good spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth, and gave them water for their thirst. And so Jesus, when he's preaching in the, in Jerusalem at the festival of the booths, he gets up and on the last day of the feast, the great day, and Jesus stood up, John 7:37, he stood up and cried out, if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. You see, God gave them water from a rock, but Jesus is saying, come to me and I will give you better water. Verse 38, whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of life. You see, Jesus is the water that truly satisfies. We all are looking for satisfaction in life, and Jesus is saying, come to me and you shall receive it.
Another, let me give you another parallel. Nehemiah 9:12. By a pillar of cloud, you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. Jesus at the festival of the booths, he stands up in front of everybody and he says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Do you see how Jesus is not saying, he's not saying I'm like that pillar of cloud. He's saying I am the fulfillment of the pillar of fire. I am the true light that can guide you out of the dark places. I am the true light who can lead you to spiritual life and vibrancy.
One more parallel. Nehemiah 9:36. Behold, we are slaves this day. They've come back from exile, but they're still slaves to Babylon. They're still dominated by the governing officials of there. It's not that they are no longer being ruled by another nation, it's that they're simply allowed to live in their homes. Behold, we are slaves this day, and the land you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts. Behold, we are slaves. And so Jesus and John ate. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. You see, he's expanding what it means to be a slave. He's not just saying you're a slave if you live under the rule of another nation, he's saying you're a slave if you practice sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Friends, I know it can be scary to confess your sins to God. I know it can be scary to really let him in there. But let me assure you that God, he is not like that idea of the judgmental grandfather that you have in your mind. That he's not just up there waiting for you to mess up so that he might smite you. But God longs, like a loving father with a sick child, to draw near to you and to give you the medicine for your soul. That he by nature delights in forgiveness more than wrath. That he longs to be kind to you, gentle to you, that he wants you to come clean, so that he can embrace you once again in his loving arms. You see, the reason why we don't confess our sin isn't because we don't know that we're sinful. It's because we have misconceptions about who God is. But when you look at this God, who would send his son as the light of the world. To pay for our penalty. He would delight, delight for you to take advantage of that.
It's like if you are a doctor sent to a a a a people who have no medicine for their wounds. Who have no, they're stricken by a disease that's easily curable. And you show up and you're like, hey guys, I've got the medicine, and they're all afraid to come to you. Because they're afraid that you might judge them, that you might not care for them well, but the doctor just delights to give people the medicine that they need to heal them from their wounds, to heal them from their disease. This is our Father, this is our God, who would delight to have you draw near, so that he can give you the medicine for your souls.
I'm not saying it's not hard. It's absolutely hard. It's hard to confess sin. It's even harder to confess it, and to know that I have to walk away from it. And I think that God is calling some of you to make those difficult decisions of walking away from something that you've been holding on to. God is calling some of us to see more nuanced ideas of how we're putting ourselves first and not God first. But friends, let me give you this assurance that God is always better. It's always better What you think will give you life will run dry, but if you go to him. Out of your heart will flow rivers of living water. It's always better. And so it's gonna take some bravery, some courage for some of us to come before the Lord, and to really confess where we are. But it's so much better.
Dane Ortland says it like this, he says, the sins of those who belong to God, open the floodgates of his heart of compassion for us. The dam breaks. It is not our loveliness that wins his love, it is our unloveliness. And so friends, as we see this passage, as we see the people of God confessing their sins, let me encourage us to likewise understand that it is safe to confess our sins to God. Not because sin doesn't matter, not because God simply overlooks it, because God has already paid the penalty for those sins by sending his son to die on our behalf. More than that, he's resurrected. He's victorious over even death and the grave. Jesus loves to forgive sinners. Yes, God hates sin, but if you place your faith in Christ, he loves you. And if you are his only begotten, as if you are his only begotten son. His heart is drawn to you and you're hurting, and your brokenness, yes, even in your sinfulness, he longs to forgive.
And so I wanna give us just a moment. I'm gonna invite Jared to come and and lead us in a song as we contemplate. I'm gonna give us a moment to confess to the Lord. To talk to him. I just wanna give you a few, a minute or two just to pray to yourself. If you have a journal, you feel free to, to write, feel free to to to confess, and maybe just ask the Lord, hey God, what is one way. That I can draw nearer to you? What is something that you want me to explore? Maybe you're not ready to give it all away, but you need to start hearing that voice of the Lord to explore what do I need to give to you? And so would you join me in prayer? I'll give you a couple of minutes and then we'll pray something corporately as well.
God, as we come before you now, as we confess our sins to you. God, we, we know that you are good. Would you help us to take a look at you? In fact, for every look inside, give us, help us to take ten looks to you. Help us to look to you over and over again, knowing that you are compassionate and kind. And God, as we think about these things, correct our misconceptions about you. And give us courage to be real with you.
During our communion in just a moment, we'll have some prayer counselors for you in the back. If you would like to pray with someone today or receive prayer, if you would just like to have someone lay a hand on your shoulder, and to pray God, it's goodness over you, I invite you to do that. I invite you to take this as a continued opportunity to confess your sin as we prepare for communion. We're gonna pray, a corporate confession together. This is one I, I pulled from the Book of Common Prayer that has been recited for Christians for generations. And as you notice in Nehemiah 9, they were confessing the sins of their fathers. And so today we're gonna use a prayer that many of, in the previous generations have also prayed. Confessing not only our sins, but of our people. Of the, the shortcomings that we have together. And most weeks we take a moment to confess our sins like this, and it's because this is what God's word does. That as we see God, we're led to confession and renewed spiritual life in Him. So, if you would speak the words that are underlined along with me, I think they all are.
Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed. By what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your son Jesus, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen.
And the good news of God is that First John chapter 1 verse 9 says that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So receive that assurance, my friends. As we confess our sins to the Lord, if you are someone who is following Christ. If you're repentant of your sin, and there's nothing more that you need to let go of today or to talk to God about, we invite you to the table. The table each week is an opportunity for us to be reminded of what Christ has done for us. It's not the perfect to come to the table, but it's the redeemed. And so if you are redeemed by God, we invite you to come and receive this meal. Let me invite you to stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal, to be reminded of what God has done for us.
God, as we come to your table today, as we come to this Lord's supper, this communion meal, Father, would you renew our spiritual vibrancy? Would you remind us that our sin has been paid for, and that we can be bold in the way that we confess to you and to one another because of what you've done on our behalf. Father, we pray that you would give us an ever more present view of who you are, so that we might see ourselves more accurately. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.